Personal Roadmap for Martin Seibert

Who am I?

My Name is Martin Seibert. I am 29 years old and CEO in a German internet agency called //SEIBERT/MEDIA with about 65 employees. I have a German diploma for economics from University of Mainz and founded //SEIBERT/MEDIA in 1996. I speak German and English fluently. My French is mediocre. If you are interested in more information about me, please visit the following pages: Website of //SEIBERT/MEDIA, my profile on our Weblog, my profile in Xing, my profile in LinkedIn, our Weblog, my tweets, my profile on TWiki.org

One of my roles in the community	Recently I have been appointed to be a member of the TWiki-Community-Council. It was and is an honor for me to help and serve the community in this position. I want to be plain, transparent and delivering results in this role. I will help with decision, but I will stay away from nagging and endless discussions.

My personal goals for TWiki.org

• Strengthen TWiki as a community
  I want to strengthen TWiki as a community and help to combine personal and professional interests of the community members to increase the results for the wiki-software.
• Focus on results
  I want to deliver results. I want to put down politics and make most of you use most of their power, that is dedicated to TWiki, for useful stuff instead of the nagging. A lot of our discussions is a drain of energy. We all need to focus on results. I want to help with that.
• Improve the usability of TWiki
  The usability of TWiki is a weak spot. I want TWiki to be a very easy software not only for small changes but also for complex actions also for non-tech-savvy employees.
  • I want to see an complete AJAX-interface, more and better WYSIWYG-integration, inline-editing, seamless sectional edit via click with AJAX and other things, that improve the usability.
  • I hate usability problems that are obvious, but do not get sorted out yet: two search input fields, no good sorting for search results in the standard TWiki-implementation
• Establish a more powerful and mighty TWiki-software
  I want to help increase the features for TWiki. The amount of plugins and features is a strong argument for us. We need to make sure, that it stays it and develop even better and more powerful features.
• Integrate non-perl-programmers in the community
  I would want TWiki to be technically open for other programming languages also by providing a sophisticated web service interface, that lets everybody steer and communicate with the system in the programming language, the prefer.
• Market TWiki according to its market position / Conquer the German market
  I want to help with TWiki-Marketing. I want TWiki to be a convincing place as a marketing website especially for business owners and managers. It is not today. I want that to be changed especially for the German managers and entrepreneurs.
• Remain superior to competition
  I want TWiki to be better than any other enterprise wiki. I will work to keep that up and to help to improve our superior position in the market.

A promise	I will never use any power that I might gain in the course of my TWiki.org-activities to support single interests of a client or of //SEIBERT/MEDIA, if they not coincide with the needs of TWiki.org as a whole and as a software in general.

My professional goals with TWiki

This is how it should be and perceived:

• I am a well known and respected consultant for TWiki.
• I want to know TWiki with it's strength and weaknesses inside out.

My professional goals with my company

• Grow wiki usage at //SEIBERT/MEIDA
  //SEIBERT/MEDIA is using TWiki as a part of our intranet. Implementing it was a big hit for us. We want to foster usage and growth of this wiki internally.
• Be one of the leading full-service-providers for TWiki
  //SEIBERT/MEDIA is one of the bigger full-service-agencies, that can deliver specialized services thorough the whole TWiki-deployment- and maintenance-process. We want to be best at offering wiki-strategy-consulting, preparing the organizational basics for wikis, setting them up, configuring them, designing the templates with profession designers, realizing them with frontend-developers, giving them the content-based structure they need, running the wiki-pilot in the company, rolling out the system, maintaining it, consulting with fostering and increasing the usage, programming individual specifics in TWiki, adapting TWiki plugins, developing new TWiki applications and running the system on secure servers in a trusted environment 24/7. Who can do all that? We can!
• Serve our TWiki-customers
  We have existing customers, that use TWiki. I want them to be able to use the best wiki-solution available for their needs. I will not impose TWiki on them, when for example a MediaWiki is more appropriate. But for enterprise wikis I see little real competition. But there is (e.g. confluence).

Conflicts, that can arise

• I want to have the impression, to be perceived as a valuable member of the community. I want to have a vote. And I want to influence the development both of the community and the software. That does not mean, that my vote has to be followed. But I want to be respected.
• It is very unlikely that we will compete with community members. The structure of //SEIBERT/MEDIA as a business provider is much different as this of most others here.
• TWiki has only limited relevancy in terms of financials for //SEIBERT/MEDIA as a whole. Our interests are mainly based on our own usage of the system and personal interests of me for example.

Concrete actions, I want to take

• Work on TWikiOrganization
• Establish a small but convincing German portal for Managers, thinking about choosing TWiki for their enterprise wiki. I want to establish that both with MichaelDaum and CarloSchulz.
• Help with marketing / writing blog entries

Discussion

I have now offered to found a German non-profit-organization with Michael Daum together. I got a "go" from Kenneth and wait for a phnoe call with PeterThoeny. Will keep you in the loop ...

-- MartinSeibert - 20 Aug 2008

The concept for a fund-raising association is documented now. Please help with your comment: TWikiFundRaising

-- MartinSeibert - 31 Aug 2008

I have started with the basics for a TWiki community survey. See: TWikiCommunitySurvey

-- MartinSeibert - 01 Sep 2008